Editor's note: This story was produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you're able, WCMU encourages you to listen to the audio version of this story by clicking the LISTEN button above. This transcript was edited for clarity and length.
Tina Sawyer: There's a new way to experience an art walk in northwest Michigan this summer. Consenses Walks in Walloon Lake takes art lovers on a sensory journey around town via Q-R codes with local artists interpretations of the pieces. I recently talked with Sally Taylor, creator of Consenses Walks. She says the idea came from a fable about six blind men meeting an elephant in the road and having different ideas for what it was.
Sally Taylor: I created sort of my own elephant by collecting 22 different photographs of one thing and then I gave each of those photographs to a different musician and asked them for their interpretation of that. They came back with these amazing songs and then I gave those songs to different dancers and the dancers danced about the songs and then the dances went to perfumers and the perfumes went to sculptors, and the sculptures went to poets and so on and so forth, until really all of the senses had been represented. And at the end I'd created 350 pieces of art.
TS: So Walloon Lake is the spot where Ernest Hemingway spent his summers. Seems appropriate for one of these walks. How do you choose these venues?
ST: We want to showcase some of the artists that we have locally and we also want to look at the sort of mycelial connectivity that exists beneath the Community and why Walloon is so perfect is because there is such an amazing diverse array of artists voices that are creating that community.
TS: Can you tell us a little bit about, I know you want people to come and actually visit and experience, but what process as to how to take this walk .
ST: First, when we start with a walk, we start with a catalyst and it usually is something to do with the town's essence and we pick a piece of artwork that already exists within the environment within the community from which to spur the consensus process. So in this case, we picked Ernest Hemingway, the sculpture, the old man and the cat to inspire the rest of the chain. There's a QR code at each of the locations that says OK, this is stop three. You know this is a painting inspired by the song on stop 2. Now go to step 4. And you start to see the connectivity between the artists when you hear their interpretations, which is also available on the website.
TS: And I guess since you are talking elephants, here is the elephant in the room that many listeners may wonder, since if people do not know you're lineage from famous artists in their own right, Carly Simon and James Taylor, your mom and dad. And people may be curious to know if they're involved at all with your project.
ST: Yeah, both both of my parents have contributed. I think my dad twice and my mom twice. Yeah, they've both created songs in reaction. My dad in the first exhibit created a song to a painting one time, and then a song to a photograph. The song that my mom created to the first photograph that I gave her was of this sort of haggard brush in the back woods of Martha's Vineyard, and she responded with the song that she made-up called Puckerbrush, which is, you know, to her about being sort of afraid. And the other one she created was a song in response to a fifth grader's painting, who created a portrait of love with this song called...ok, wait, what was it? (sings) Only you know...I think it was called...oh, gosh, I can't remember the name of the song is....this is really terrible.
TS: We'll just call it "Only you know." (laughs)
ST: Ok, yeah, it was, yeah, and it's a beautiful song. And I think about how those two pieces of music represent her, even though they're in response to different pieces. To me, it talks for willingness to go into the mystery with real open mindedness and that's who she is as a human. As how I see her representation of both of those pieces of art.
TS: And what do you hope for consensus in the future?
ST: My biggest hope is that consensus will provide people with the willingness or the ability to see the way that we walk through life, the way that we create our worldview is really a brilliantly beautiful piece of art that should be shared but also recognized as limited to understand the wholeness and that perhaps everybody's version can be welcome and not taken too seriously. And that's my hope for consensus.
The walk will end at the end of September but can be taken virtually anytime by clicking here.
